Beyond GDP
Measuring what really matters to our prosperity and future
Kaisa Kosonen, Greenpeace International
kaisa.kosonen@greenpeace.org
June 2012
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Twenty years ago in Rio, governments acknowledged that we needed new concepts for wealth and
prosperity. Measuring well-being with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) alone wasn’t working, and there was a
need for new concepts that would allow higher standards of living through changed lifestyles less dependent
on the Earth’s finite resources and more in harmony with the Earth’s carrying capacity. Following from this,
“new systems of national accounts and other indicators of sustainable development” would need to be
developed.1
Ahead of Rio+20, the need to (finally) go beyond GDP has grown stronger. This was also acknowledged in
the “zero draft” negotiation document, which in January 2012 claimed to “recognise the limitations of GDP as
a measure of well-being” and suggested to “develop and strengthen indicators complementing GDP that
integrate economic, social and environmental dimensions in a balanced manner”.
New ways of measuring progress and wealth could mean true progress for sustainability, because what we
measure affects what we do, and if our measurements are flawed, decisions get distorted.
GDP was never meant to be a measure of well-being or development. It’s an indicator that grows by the
number of car crashes, purchase of private guns, funerals, loss of primary forests, overfishing, and so forth. It
also doesn’t account for the impacts our current choices will have in the future, which is a key question for
sustainability. Yet, a myopic focus on GDP growth has been – and still remains – at the core of what human
development is perceived to be by political leaders.
The criticism of GDP is as old as the tool itself, but the economic crisis – coupled with looming resource
scarcity and multiple environmental challenges – has created new momentum for adopting better
measurement tools and going “beyond GDP”, a slogan frequently used today even by the World Bank. The
UN, OECD, UNEP and others are all developing and testing different measuring tools.
The “GDP plus” proposals focus on correcting or augmenting GDP, so that it would serve as a better
indicator of economic performance – with a varying degree of social and environmental factors. “Green
GDP” refers to correcting GDP by subtracting the monetary value of the depletion of natural resources and
environmental degradation (see below for Natural Wealth Accounting). While these adjustments would be an
improvement on the current GDP measure, they alone won’t solve challenges related to measuring wellbeing and sustainability. They can even create new problems, by measuring and aggregating something that
is inherently speculative, creating an illusion of substitution and control. In addition, Green GDP accounting
does not assess how far we are from sustainability targets, so its “growth” per se is no guarantee of
sustainability.
As attractive as it would be to replace current GDP with another headline figure, we will need several indicators
with different functions to measure well-being and true sustainability. This was also a conclusion of the StiglitzSen-Fitoussi Commission (2009) that assessed alternatives to GDP.2
Measuring environmental value
Environmental valuation and accounting can help to better value the ecosystem services and natural
resources a healthy planet provides us for free – and which we often take for granted, until we risk losing
them. Exercises like this can be very eye opening, as the costs of resource depletion and environmental
destruction become visible and reach new audiences. The trade-offs in policymaking become more visible.
The UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) provides an international standard for
Natural Wealth Accounting. It is about measuring physical stocks and flows of “natural capital” (such as
minerals, fisheries and water) and their quality in a common framework with national income and wealth
accounting (the System of National Accounts). The idea is to gain understanding of the physical basis (and
limits) of our real economy and how policy choices affect our “natural capital”, and vice versa.
1
2
Agenda 21. Chapter 4, paragraph 4.1
1.
Stiglitz JE, Sen A & Fitoussi J-P (2009). Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Peformance and Social
Progress.
http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/en/
However, the methods of natural capital accounting are still (after decades) able to give only a partial picture of a very complex
issue, and different countries use them differently. Common accounting frameworks for ecosystem and ecosystem services are
currently being developed.
Acknowledging key principles of measuring and valuing
There are many ways to value nature. Giving numerical values to deeply interconnected natural systems is inherently speculative
and not always sensible. At worse, simplified, aggregated indicators can be dangerously misleading, by ignoring
interconnectedness of natural systems and the possibility of tipping points and abrupt changes. Not everything can or should be
monetised and valuing must not be equal to trading. Also, valuing natural capital must not be equal to privatising the
commons. Valuing our ecosystems should be built on people’s rights and needs rather than private or elite greed.
Natural capital differs from physical, man-made capital in a fundamental way. We may wish to control nature as “assets” and
have a possibility to “bail out” Earth systems. But if we ignore planetary boundaries a bail out may be too late, and no money in
the world will be able to help us. So one needs to be very careful about what we are measuring and for which purpose; what
we can control and what not; that assumptions made are fully transparent, and that when we’re leaving out invaluables from
calculations, it doesn’t mean that they are ignored, it means that they are paid special attention. We tend to prepare for
what we can comprehend, so we undermine (or undervalue) uncertain things and the uncontrollables until they start unfolding,
and it may be too late to act. Measuring how close we are to tipping points and planetary boundaries, and what scale of
changes are required to avoid them, will require special attention and indicators.
Governments at Rio must finally acknowledge that they have been chasing wrong goals (economic growth per se) with wrong tools
(GDP), instead of seeing economy as a tool for achieving societal and environmental goals. Consequently, while wealth measured
on GDP has increased, inequalities between and within countries have grown and the planet’s ability to sustain life as we know it
has deteriorated. There is an urgent need to clarify our goals and priorities, and to adjust our indicators accordingly.
Governments need to commit to adopting new ways of measuring wealth and prosperity in a way that acknowledges planetary
vulnerabilities and equity.
They must also mandate large corporations to do sustainability reporting, where they assess both their own environmental and
social impacts, and also how trends on climate change, resource scarcity and social development will affect their business.
The True Costs of Coal
Traditionally considered the cheapest fuel around, the market price for coal ignores its most significant costs. These
so-called “external costs” manifest themselves as respiratory diseases, mining accidents, acid rain, smog pollution, reduced
agricultural yields, water use impact and climate change that society is paying for in hospital bills, prices of water and food,
climate impacts, and so forth. If governments required polluters to pay for the negative impacts their profit making is causing,
the kWh prices of coal electricity would be much higher, revealing the true cheapness of renewable energy and energy
efficiency. Greenpeace has recently commissioned studies on true costs of coal in many countries, including Poland, India,
China and South Africa.
For more information, see: www.greenpeace.org/coal
For more information, contact:
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